Brian couldn’t imagine that things would ever be otherwise. But then somehow he lost his job. Dan, one of the partners at the firm in Syracuse, kindly made a few calls on his behalf, and Brian was able to tell Avis he’d been made a better offer, pure opportunity—perfect for their growing family. It was the truth: he just didn’t tell her that he’d been “laid off.” Didn’t mention that Dan had first expressed the feeling during an early performance review that Brian wasn’t sufficiently “tuned in” to their office “culture.” With her baker’s hours and physical work, she slept instantly and deeply and had no idea that Brian no longer slept well at night, his dreams laced with shreds of morning meetings, the dread of unmanageable research, massive client folders, the creak of his hated office chair. He’d finally drop off around two each night, then drag himself stupefied and shivering from the bed when the alarm went off at five.
Fortunately, business at Parkhurst, Irvington & Benstock was exploding, the WSJ filled with their ads luring land investors to South Florida. Back then, Miami seemed to drowse in a heat stupor; the highways were wide, gray, and quiet. The Everglades encroached on the roads—Brian could smell the swamp air and sulfurous mangroves—and every winter, black motes of vultures spun high overhead like genies. The city was lonely then, populated mostly by old folks. God’s waiting room. Yet, to his surprise, Brian loved the sun-soaked landscape.
His father, a litigation expert, had told Brian he was a fool to take the job—that he was trading earning potential for the security of a retainer. “You’ll be a kept man,” he insisted. “You’re too young to be playing it so safe. Hang up a shingle, take divorces. A little malpractice—just to get going. You’ll bag ten times as much inside of two years and have all the security you please. It’s billable hours, Bry, that’s all it comes down to. The hours.”—his father scratched at the loose skin under his neck—“What’s in Miami? The dying and the dead.”
Still, Parkhurst offered Brian enough that Avis could afford to start her at-home business. PI&B were her first clients: she supplied the Austrian chef at their executive dining hall with linzer tortes, lebkuchen, strudel, Black Forest cakes. Gradually other corporations and local businesses began to request her goods for retreats, conferences, and boardroom lunches. At the same time, Brian found he enjoyed working for a big developer. They hired brilliant architects and contractors; their buildings became part of the sharp, pale skyline. Brian believed he and Avis were helping to build an actual city—food and shelter—inside and outside. Unlike New York or Boston, Miami was a place you could go to and really create something new. Best of all, its boom-or-bust energy, a penchant for dreaming: a dream of a city in a dream of a state.
Avis hired assistants; they hosted dinner parties, bought a 34-foot Sea Ray, a twelfth-floor getaway on Marco Island. There were season tickets, box tickets: they joined the board of the Fairchild Garden; contributed to the Deering Estate.
Avis and Brian had lived in Miami for about ten years when the father of one of Stanley’s classmates invited Brian to an art opening. Brian wondered if there was something prohibitive in the nature of practicing law—he found it difficult and frequently stressful to connect with other men—at least to the point of real friendship. But there was something easy and agreeable about Albert. A publicity rep for the Miami Symphony, he was the sort of cultivated person Brian had tried to emulate as a student. Albert talked about opera and dance and “performance.” He saw hidden meanings in films and books—what he called the “layers” in things; he brought up the uses of symbolism in theater and music.
The opening was in one of the neighborhoods on the northwest outskirts of downtown—territory Brian had never ventured into before. The local denizens kept muscular, flat-headed dogs tied to ropes in the yards and each house was ringed by a chain-link fence. Albert parked on the street and they walked by a group of men with bandannas tied on their heads. One yelled at Brian, “Yo, suit! What up, homes?” The “gallery” turned out to be a private home—the owner, a Haitian-American collector—had bought and connected several little cottages, making a rambling, warren-like space, every wall covered with canvases. Brian had expected to be bored, but he was electrified by the work: seven- and ten-foot-high canvases of nudes—their faces torn at and broken with slashes of paint, their eyes like open wounds. They stopped in front of one canvas—an image of a woman with a rippling chest and blotted black eyes.
“What do you think about that?” Albert asked.
Brian was startled, disoriented by how deeply the work affected him. There didn’t seem to be any meaningful way for him to put words to what he was experiencing.
Albert stood next to him, nodding. “Strong, isn’t it? The image has depth and dimensions. Makes you feel there’s an actual presence here. Maybe even like she’s angry with us.”
“I suppose so—that’s it,” Brian said.
“I think that challenging work—it kind of takes your words away.” Albert nudged his glasses with a knuckle. “Not everyone really lets the experience in—I mean, like you are now. People love to try to talk over everything.” Albert engaged a woman in a sinuous dress in bantering conversation and rattled off the names of prominent Haitian and Cuban artists: Brian had heard of none. Apparently the artist whose work they were viewing was from a town called Gonaïves, on the northern coast of Haiti. “Of course there’s plenty for this artist to be angry about,” Albert said. “Before he became famous, he had to rely on missionaries for art supplies. He would go without food so that he could buy paints. And the political situation there, well . . .”
When Brian and Albert left the gallery, Brian was buoyed by the images he’d seen—the deep slashes through the paint, the skin rippling with sinew, and sudden, unearthly glimpses of bone. He felt vividly how his young son would love this sort of thing—the outlaw gallery and humble neighborhood.
It had grown darker. Brian looked around at the still street: a streetlamp burned out at the corner, the shrunken houses and ragged patches of grass, gray in the low light. On the way to the car, he heard voices—people gathered in a front yard, a burst of laughter, the quiet slap and tick of dominoes. There was a scrabbling movement along the gutter: rats? At the end of the block, something fetid and black pooled in the center of the street. A gray scarf of smoke rose from a bonfire—children tossing in sticks and bits of trash: the air was thick and watery, as if the convergence of shared history had a visible weight. It occurred to Brian that the people on this street were from the same island the artist had come from. He stared at the reflections sparkling in the passenger window and didn’t speak for the rest of the ride back.
BRIAN PUSHES AWAY from the desk. The phone is silent for once, emails blink on the screen. He regards the crowded sky high above the horizon, filled with thunderheads and a silken light the same shade of gray as the lining of his grandfather’s coat. The forecasters are merrily predicting an “active season.” His thoughts leap to the house, the weight in the halls, the unlit rooms he’ll come home to if—as he expects—Avis returns without having seen Felice. He checks his watch: 12:37. He closes his eyes with a brief fervent wish that his wife isn’t waiting alone at some café table.
His window faces south and east. If only he had strong enough binoculars he might be able to locate his family. The city spreads its cantons over endless miles. Little Haiti must be somewhere behind him: one of those places where you should never run out of gas. And Haiti itself is somewhere before him, beyond the barrier island of Miami Beach, a slender nation tucked within the horizon, Edenic and rife with turmoil and poverty. There but for the grace of God, his father liked to say. As if his own life had descended to him straight from heaven itself.
Now the gray light evinces the lowering of Stanley’s stern gaze, his disapproval: how he would scorn this latest condo project! Brian can almost hear his son’s voice, taking up his favorite topics—the preservation of neighborhood fabric, cultural history and community. Brian admires his son, but sometimes he rem
inds Brian, oddly, of his righteous old dad. He turns from window to desk—his two poles—with a sense of facing something. He picks up his handset, preferring its shape to the cold chip of the cell, and makes a call. “Tony—yeah—tell me again where we’re at with Little Haiti?”
Avis
AVIS LOOKS WITH BLANK EYES AT THE ONRUSHING freeway. The air smells of tar and cement, as if the city has turned into a smoking construction pit. She curls into herself, trying not to touch the sides of the car, trying not to speak or brush up against anything.
Miami seems as frightening to Avis now as it had when they’d first arrived—a lawless land where cabbies kidnapped young coeds on spring break, German tourists were shot in broad daylight, gangs of young black and brown men roved around in their thin white tanks, long baggy jeans, hands jammed in their pockets. There were “home invasions,” in which thieves would simply rampage into houses and murder the inhabitants at their dinner tables. She’d seen a fistfight break out at the local video store, twice watched police run across neighbors’ lawns with guns drawn, and—too many times to count—she’s had to slam on her brakes to avoid a careening drunken driver—her heart seized up, throbbing in her chest. One day Avis cut short a phone conversation because of a racket outside. She went out to the front lawn to see a police helicopter hovering almost directly over her house: some neighbors told her that a “fugitive” was on the loose: she and the children stayed inside, doors locked for hours, waiting for an all-clear. After Felice had left, Avis had to stop watching the local news because it was too awful, more than she could stand. Her teenage daughter was out there.
How is she supposed to endure this, she wonders, nearly in a trance. They meet only at Felice’s whim, on Felice’s terms. The psychotherapist, the police counselor, the family social services counselor said, No: don’t agree to these conditions. “You’re giving her too much control and no incentive to come to you,” the girl at the runaway crisis line told her. Brian seemed to have instinctively understood this principle—coolly, systematically shutting down all attempts at seeing Felice within months of her final disappearance. But two months ago, Avis was standing in the produce section at Publix when a woman approached her. Her round face was clear, just a wrinkle at the corner of each eye: she took Avis’s hand and studied her for a moment before saying in cadenced English, “I heard you go to see your baby whenever she calls. I would do exactly same thing as you. Exactly.”
She squeezed Avis’s hand and Avis realized that this was Marina, the housekeeper for Mrs. Grigorian, down the street from them. Avis stared at bunches of guavas, hunched as if her center had caved in.
Nina clears her throat and Avis realizes they are already done with the freeway and are now taking Coral Way to beat the Dixie backup. “Do you have anything in the house for dinner? Do you need me to stop—we get some rice and chicken, empanadas or some postres?” Nina insists on certain Cuban interpretations in her own cooking, uses lard in her pan Cubano and boils condensed milk in the can for dulce de leche.
“No, we’re fine,” Avis mumbles. She presses the window button and accidentally hits the lock instead. “Postres, why would I want postres? Do you not know what I do for a living?”
“You need more air?” Nina reaches for the climate control panel.
“No, please, nothing.”
They make a left on Douglas and stop at the intersection with Bird. The traffic is torturously slow with the erratic, newly-arriveds—immigrants and tourists—prone to rolling to a distracted stop mid-lane. As they wait, about eight cars from the light, a homeless person materializes between the cars near the intersection, wafting up the street toward them, flashing his wrecked, hand-lettered sign on a panel of cardboard box: Pleese help. I have wife and kid and no— He turns toward a white Cadillac several cars ahead before Avis can finish reading. Cadillac stuffs some bills into his jar. He turns back and begins drifting back toward them, a tall black man so emaciated Avis can see the fine bones of his scapula, the ribboned, muscles of his forearms; he looks burnt down to a shadow, a cinder in the blast of August sunlight.
Avis picks up her handbag.
“Oh no,” Nina says. “Please don’t.”
“Oh, for heaven sakes,” Avis mutters, rummaging in her bag. “I only want to give him a buck.”
“Too late,” Nina says, because the light’s changed, but they have to wait for the usual procession of yellow and red light–runners in the cross street. When they finally move, it’s only to inch up a few spaces before the light turns again, so they’re now a car length away from the man and his sign: job or hous. Im good person—
“Please, querida. I really do understand, but it’s better if you give the money to a homeless shelter or some sort of something . . .”
Avis ignores her, digging out her wallet, in which, she discovers, she has no small bills, only the fifties for Felice. The man is now making a beeline for them, his eyes round and hollow. Avis goes for the window button and instead hits the lock again. “Shit. How do you open this thing?”
“Ay, mujer, why do you have to be so—”
“I want to help this guy out a little. What’s the big deal?” Now the man is standing on the other side of the window, peering in.
“He’s some scam artist. These guys, they make tons of money.”
“Well, then it’s a crappy job and he’s earned every penny!” Avis’s voice rises, stretching thin. Anger throbs in her temples as she grabs her door handle.
“What are you doing?” Nina taps the accelerator, trying to scoot ahead, but now a row of skate punks and pedestrians is crossing in front of the car. The man on the other side of the window strolls alongside the car as they move a few feet. “That’s dangerous!”
Avis opens the car door and hands the man some fifties. His eyes roll from the cash to her face and she can see a fine, inflamed crimson web beneath his irises. “O Bondye mwen bon sou latè.” His voice is grainy and low, it sounds like crushed sugar. “Mèsi, pitit fi. Bondye beni ou.”
Flooded by a jolt of pleasure, she also hands him the silver cookie tin: he accepts, thunderstruck. “Cookies,” she says. “Pâtisserie.” His sign is tucked under his arm and his hands shake with tremors that rattle the tin like a snare drum. He tugs at the lid and for a moment Avis fears he isn’t strong enough to open it.
The light changes, Nina steps on it, and Avis slams the door shut. “I cannot believe you,” Nina says angrily. “What a waste.”
“Why? Because I wanted to help someone?” She turns in her seat in time to see him pry the tin open, cars swerving around him as he peers inside.
“That won’t help him—he’s just gonna go get drugs or some booze.”
“Good. I hope he enjoys it. I hope he has one moment of pleasure on this crappy earth.”
“I doubt he even has enough teeth to chew those cookies,” Nina adds bitterly. “He won’t know what to do with that sort of food. Let him go up to Overtown and get food.”
Avis is infuriated. “How is this any of your business?”
Nina starts to speak, stops, then, with her eyes narrowed, she says, “That negro viejo—he has nothing to do with your daughter!”
Avis’s lips part.
“Because they’re both outdoors—on the streets. Come on, don’t act dumb. Just because you gave to him doesn’t make things better for her. You do these stupid things like you think one is like the other.”
Avis feels another throb in her temples. Her fingers curl into her empty hands.
When they pull into Avis’s driveway twelve blocks later, Nina is calmer and she tries to mollify Avis, speaking in her modulated voice. “Ven, cariña, hey, I’m sorry.” She touches her employer’s wrist. “I shouldn’t have tried to stop you. You were right—it—none of it was really my business.”
But the anger has a chemical grip on her. Avis shoulders her way out of the car door, then throws it shut without a backwards glance. Nina gets out of the car. “Please, Avis, can we just talk?” Avis kee
ps going, skipping the flagstone path and striding across the lawn. “It’s okay if you want to be angry,” Nina pleads. “But do you have to be this angry?”
Avis turns the key in the door. “Aren’t we still friends?” Nina calls, hands on her hips.
Avis steps inside and closes the door.
DURING THE YEAR OF Felice’s runaway attempts, Avis and Brian created their own protocol: call the Gables police, the sheriff’s department, the highway patrol. Contact the local FBI, the missing children help lines, her school. Place notices in the Herald and local newsletters. Send alerts to the National Runaway Switchboard. And they searched. They spent hours in their cars crawling through the streets of Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Kendall, Hialeah, staring into yards and windows, spying on other people’s lives and families. Avis approached strangers in the street with photographs—which horrified Brian. He told her: That isn’t safe. And: You’re upsetting people. Some of the worst fights of their marriage were over those snapshots. Avis accusing him of caring more about appearances than about their own daughter. Brian said: We have to draw a line.
After two or three or four nights away, Felice would either come home by herself or the police would deliver her, followed by humiliating and protracted visits from social service counselors. But there were long, comparatively peaceful periods between these vanishings, during which Felice seemed to “return” to herself. As if she’d split into two separate girls. She settled back into school. She would be well-mannered; she helped Stanley with the dishes; she chattered with her father about soccer practice; she confided in her mother about her friends—but never about running away, why she kept leaving. Where she went when she was gone.
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